John Atkinson Cunningham (24 June 1846–9 October 1897), president of the State Female Normal School (later Longwood University), was born in Richmond. He was the son of Mary Morris Johnston Dillon Cunningham and her second husband, the physician John Atkinson Cunningham, and the grandson of the Richmond flour and tobacco manufacturer Edward Cunningham. Educated at home by a French governess because of his delicate health and later at New London Academy in Bedford County, Cunningham enlisted on 5 June 1864 in Captain Willis Jefferson Dance's Company (Powhatan Artillery), in which he served until the end of the Civil War.

After studying ancient languages and mathematics at the University of Virginia from 1865 through 1868, Cunningham moved to New Castle, Kentucky, where he taught at a military academy founded by the former Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith. After a fire destroyed the school in 1870, Smith became chancellor of the University of Nashville (later George Peabody College for Teachers and still later a part of Vanderbilt University), and Cunningham joined the faculty in the Latin chair. On 14 June 1875 he married Florence M. Boyd, of Nashville. They had one son. Cunningham moved back to Richmond, where his wife died on 9 November 1876. For a time he worked as a druggist but then returned to teaching. In 1877 he became principal of the Madison School, a large public school in Richmond. Cunningham married Martha (or Mattie) Macon Eggleston, of Cumberland County, on 3 April 1884. They had two daughters and one son.

On 20 July 1887 Cunningham was elected superintendent of the State Female Normal School, in Farmville, three years after it became Virginia's first public college to prepare white women to teach in the state's public schools. When he arrived, the school had just instituted a new curriculum consisting of two years of academic education and one year of professional training at the college's practice school. Cunningham oversaw the construction of several modern brick buildings and in 1891 the installation of incandescent electric lighting. He nearly doubled the size of the faculty, to fourteen, by hiring teachers educated at such institutions as the Harvard Annex (later Radcliffe College), the George Peabody College for Teachers, the University of Virginia, and Vassar College. Enrollment grew from about 90 in 1887 to 250 in 1897, and the annual number of graduates rose from 14 to 40. By all accounts Cunningham was a popular teacher of psychology and didactics, an able administrator, and a strong believer in both moral and physical education in addition to rigorous academic training. He exchanged the title of superintendent for president in 1893. Neighboring Hampden-Sydney College awarded him an honorary LL.D. in 1896.

Early in his eleventh year at the State Female Normal School, John Atkinson Cunningham died of meningitis at his Farmville home on 9 October 1897. He was buried next to the grave of his first wife in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond. A student dormitory at Longwood University bears his name.

Sources Consulted:
"A Brief Biographical Sketch of Dr. John Atkinson Cunningham" and "Dr. Cunningham's Administration" (undated typescripts), Longwood University Archives, including birth date, also on gravestone; biographies in Charles Edward Burrell, A History of Prince Edward County, Virginia (1922), 316–317, Rosemary Sprague, Longwood College: A History (1989), 64–77 (portrait on 67), and Richard L. Nicholas and Joseph Servis, Powhatan, Salem and Courtney Henrico Artillery (1997), 203; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers (1861–1865), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Davidson Co., Tenn., Marriage Bonds and Licenses (1875), Metropolitan Government Archives of Nashville and Davidson County; Marriage Register, Culpeper Co. (1884), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; State Female Normal School at Farmville, Virginia, Catalogues (1887–1898); obituaries in Richmond Dispatch, Richmond State, and Richmond Times, all 10 Oct. 1897, Lynchburg News, 12 Oct. 1897, Farmville Herald, 15 Oct. 1897 (variant birth date of 24 June 1845), and Virginia School Journal 6 (1897): 219–220 (variant birth year of 1845); memorials and faculty and student resolutions in Normal Record 2 (Nov. 1897): 1, 4–16 (variant birth year of 1845).

Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brent Tarter.

How to cite this page:
Brent Tarter, "John Atkinson Cunningham (1846–1897)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cunningham_John_Atkinson_1846-1897, accessed [today's date]).

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